Inkatha

The execution-style murder of six supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party Monday deepened fears that an ethnic conflict could be looming ahead of South Africa's first democratic election. Inkatha said the killings may ignite an "all-out ethnic war," and pointed fingers at the African National Congress. The six men died after a group of 11 gunmen stopped the minibus taxi in which they were traveling around 1 a.m. Monday in Wadeville, a Johannesburg suburb. The 13 passengers were...

Police on Tuesday disclosed having uncovered a vast cache of arms and ammunition in a bunker in KwaZulu/Natal province, aggravating tensions as South Africa's second post-apartheid elections approach on June 2. The stockpile was found in Nquthu, about 20 miles west of Ulundi, the former headquarters of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party. Inkatha and President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress have been seeking...

Skumbuza Shezi, 10, and his 8-year-old brother, Bongani, were asleep in their family's farmhouse last month when the door was smashed open and a group of men rushed in with clubs, knives and machetes. "They were yelling, `We`re going to get rid of all the comrades,` " recalled a 16-year-old neighbor who identified himself only as "Justice" and said he was head of a local defense unit. Bongani, his head cut, escaped by crawling under a bed, the neighbor said. Skumbuza was...

Angry over testimony before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that linked the Inkatha Freedom Party to assassination squads, Inkatha leaders said Friday they would break off negotiations with the African National Congress to end political violence in the troubled province of KwaZulu/Natal. The move by the Zulu-based Inkatha party, the second-largest black political group after President Nelson Mandela's ANC, was another attack on the credibility of the...

In a show of strength Monday to underline their opposition to South Africa's new constitution, thousands of Zulus in traditional warrior garb shot volleys of automatic rifle fire into the air outside the government buildings where their king was holding talks with President F.W. De Klerk. Elsewhere, Inkatha supporters pulled commuters from cars, set fire to buses and burned homes as they attempted to enforce a one-day strike to protest the constitution, which is to go into effect after...

The ruling African National Congress said Sunday that the current truce with its arch-rival Inkatha Freedom Party could lead to discussion of a merger. A response to a report in a Johannesburg newspaper added that no talks had yet taken place. The Sunday Times report followed a series of meetings in recent weeks between leaders of the two parties aimed at quelling the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal province. The Times said "powerful ANC and IFP leaders in KwaZulu-Natal...

As national black figures argued about peace, black townships outside the Natal provincial capital of Pietermaritzburg ended 1987 in an unprecedented outpouring of fratricidal violence. With numbing regularity, lists of firebombings, mutilations, stabbings and shootings issued daily by the police have chronicled a six-month escalation in the savagery. Among the recent victims: an 80-year-old woman and her granddaughter burned to death, a man found decapitated...

Hundreds of poor, mostly young Zulu men and women milled about for hours in the strong sun last Wednesday as they waited behind a school building for the photo ID card they needed to vote. They were so anxious for the precious papers that when a group of journalists showed up in this sprawling rural village of huts amid the hills of Natal province, the crowd mistook them for voting officials. The men and women began to press in closely, clamoring for documents, until they were told in Zulu...

A shrine of framed photographs perches atop the credenzas lining the walls of the round conference room where South Africa's other black leader, Zulu Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, holds court for visitors. There is a picture of Buthelezi with Britain's Margaret Thatcher. With Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Here is West Germany's Helmut Kohl; there is French political leader Jacques Chirac. And Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson. Somewhere in the mix are a large honorary...

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose Inkatha Freedom Party entered South Africa's election campaign only last week, was forced to call off a rally Saturday and return to his hometown after at least three representatives of a rival political party were killed there. Buthelezi, who is contesting Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress to become this nation's first black president, was forced to cut short a campaign swing through Orange Free State after three ANC campaigners...

The prospects for an end to violence in black townships grew more credible Friday when Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader, made a surprisingly warm personal overture to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the Zulu-based organization vying with the ANC for influence. Mandela said he was willing to meet with Buthelezi and expressed gratitude for his longstanding friendship, a gesture that could conceivably make the two leaders the oddest couple in the new era of South...

Signs advertising the Inkatha Freedom Party's belated participation in the nation's first all-race elections have cropped up in this township outside Durban. Grafitti scrawled on walls and roadways say "Viva IFP. Shenge all the way" (Shenge is Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi's tribal name) and posters of Buthelezi adorn trees and lightpoles in Inkatha neighborhoods. But all these outward signs of a campaign finally being unleashed could not mask the frenzied desperation and confusion...

Fighting between rival black factions swirled through parts of Soweto for a second successive day Friday as the leaders of major black groups failed to agree on the date and location of a meeting to settle their differences. At least 31 people have been killed in the two days of factional clashes in Soweto, the Johannesburg suburb that is South Africa's largest segregated black township. The fighting pits residents asserting allegiance to the African National Congress against Zulu...

Most visitors to this remote wilderness come in tour buses with the hope of seeing the rhinos. They are probably unaware that in a corner of this game reserve, cordoned off with barbed wire, about 1,000 young men loyal to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi are being trained in the arts of war. On one recent morning, a group of several dozen recruits stood in the shade of a tree practicing firing handguns. Another group was receiving instruction on the relative merits of R-1 and R-4...

This country's two most prominent black rivals, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela and Inkatha Freedom Party President Mangosuthu Buthelezi, made peace Tuesday after more than a decade of bitter estrangement, raising hopes that the bloody war between their followers may at last be brought to an end. Smiling, joking and thoroughly at ease with each other, they announced that their parties had agreed "to cease all attacks against one...

Lindiwe Mngadi, 25, is in little doubt as to why a band of Inkatha Freedom Party supporters swept into her rural settlement of Sonkombo last Sunday, shooting randomly, forcing everyone to flee and then setting fire to the houses. "They don't want us to vote, so they are going to kill us all," she said as she moved the few belongings she salvaged into a tent on the edge of the town of Verulam, 30 miles from her home. About 80 refugees began settling there Thursday...

By Bill Finley, Associate publisher, In These Times newspaper | March 6, 1990

Howard Witt's story on the "black on black" violence and killing in the Natal province of South Africa (Sunday, Feb. 25) virtually ignored the main cause of this horrifying situation. Black and white South African anti-apartheid leaders blame the South African police and army for initially fostering this bloody rivalry with their backing of Inkatha-the conservative anti-African National Congress group led by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. In a manner similar to our own government's program that sought to set...

After the chaotic collapse of Bophuthatswana last week, South Africa's eyes are turning toward the last and most powerful holdout against April's all-race elections, Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela made a triumphal first visit Tuesday to Bophuthatswana, the former black homeland that is now firmly under South African government control and ready to take part in the elections. But it now seems certain that Buthelezi's...

In their first legal meeting on South African soil after 30 years of jail, bannings and exile, leaders of the African National Congress found themselves trying to catch up to their followers. While Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tampo, Thabo Mbeki and other key ANC leaders were away, history surged ahead. New and less-patient generations of black South Africans came of age, and now the newest generation, known as "comrades," are waging street battles of their own. The ANC leaders emerged from...

Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party joined the white right wing Saturday in saying it will boycott South Africa's first multiracial election, deepening the prospects for violence during the campaign. A joint Inkatha-right wing boycott is considered far more dangerous than a boycott by either one of the two groups. Both have only limited capacity to disrupt the elections, but together they represent a more formidable force. The country can now look forward to a...